A Chapter from From Telekhany to America

by Esther Miller

The Glass Factory

One mild summer morning a sharp whistle suddenly cut through the air, notifying
Telekhany that the glass factory was open and people should come to work. Doors
flew open. People spilled out of their houses to see and hear the factory's
first signal. They didn't see a thing, but heard a shrill whistle coming from
the town's outskirts far behind the woods.

The wide road leading to the glass factory was crowded with people. Old and
young walked in the direction of the horn. The contractor and builder of the
factory, Shia Beilkes, a Jew in his late thirties, tall, bony, quick, with
sharp facial features, happy gray eyes and a short trimmed beard walked proudly
forward. He was the only carpenter in Telekhany who could read blueprints.
People said that he could understand construction blueprints as well as the
engineer Krutchenko, who created the entire glass factory construction plan.
Under Shia Beilkes supervision several hundred tradesmen worked, a fact that
filled him with enormous joy and pride on his way to the completed factory.

The glass factory promised the town prosperity, and when construction started
there was no shortage of tradesmen; most of the tradesmen were brought in from
the nearby communities. Even before the factory started production, Jews in
town earned a living from its construction, and shopkeepers earned their living
from the tradesmen and peasants who were employed in the construction.

The truth is that the factory didn't open all of a sudden, but gradually,
involving one group of tradesmen and then another, section by section. However,
on that morning the first signal coming from the factory was heard all over
town, calling those who had already been hired to come to work. Many peasants
came from the villages with their wives and children. They arrived in
horse-drawn wagons and on foot. Old overworked peasants with brown faces like
the brown wrinkled bark of old trees, and broad-shouldered young people from
villages, full of strength in their limbs. Many of the peasants crossed
themselves and expressed amazement at the new wood houses and the new roads at
the huge new glass factory, which were spread out on a huge piece of land,
covered since time immemorial with wild trees and tall swamp grasses.

More than anyone, Jewish mothers and their young children were pleased with the
factory. All the women whose husbands were religious teachers and tradesmen
took their young daughters to the factory to apply for jobs with the Jewish
businessmen, the Tchernichov brothers. Shmuel Tchernichov was the younger
brother, and was in charge of hiring workers. Rumor had it that the
Tchernichovs only hired tall and healthy-looking girls. The younger and weaker
children were sent home to eat porridge. The mothers of such
children found a way around this obstacle. They dressed the children in their
older sisters' dresses and high heels and went to try their luck. Maybe they
would succeed, and many did. There was almost no household in town without at
least one child employed or promised employment there.

On that morning, Fradel took Bailka by the hand and Chaim, dressed in a
Spencer, by the other. She knew that her children were still too small to work
in the factory, but she just wanted to share the big event with everyone else
and revel in the new source of prosperity, in the revival that the factory was
bringing to town. With tears of joy in her eyes she thought it would now be
unnecessary to send children away to work as housemaids or to factories in the
big cities. Pearl would come home from Pinsk where she worked in a match
factory, and get a job here. Even today she would ask the Yanover wagon driver
to bring her home for G-d's sake. Looking at the people around her coming along
to Tchernichov's office to look for a job for themselves or their children, she
felt that everything up till now was just a run up to the great event that the
factory was now bringing into the life of the town.

Long before the factory opened, the town sizzled. Wherever a person stood or
went, in every home, everyone was talking about the great prosperity coming to
Telekhany. Boats would travel the rivers, and people would send crates of glass
products to big cities, and they would even go abroad by the hundreds, and even
thousands, of crates. From there they would bring back merchandise never seen
before in Telekhany! Everybody would live like a king.

Even before they started working, children dreamed at night about what they
would do with the money they earned. Hodel, the daughter of Avremel the
bricklayer, who was just about to leave town and take a job as a maid in a big
city also got a job at the glass factory. She was so overjoyed that she had to
share her joy with someone. She confided to her mother that she had spent a few
days thinking about what she would do with her first earnings. Her mother Zelda
advised her to save it for a wardrobe. Avremel the bricklayer said that she was
still too young, and that there would be plenty of time to save money for
featherbeds and cushions. In the meantime, he said, they should fix the straw
roof, or even remove the straw and replace it with shingles so that the
Christian priest wouldn't be able to pull the straw from it for not paying him
his interest on time.

After haggling for a long time, her parents arrived at a compromise, i.e. when
Hodel brought home her earnings, they would then decide what to do with it.
When Hodel came home with her first three rubles and placed them on the table,
the family rejoiced, and her little brothers and sisters attacked the table and
looked at the shiny silver rubles with yearning eyes, not daring to touch them.
Avremel also approached the table. Zelda, his wife, followed him. Her small
gray eyes gray eyes looked at the coins, and her wrinkled face, surrounded by a
white kerchief, shone. She too was scared to touch the coins. Avremel picked up
one silver ruble, examined it carefully and bit it with his strong yellow
teeth. He did the same with the other two coins. He bit them all around and
suddenly dropped them on the table. When he heard the fine sharp sound they
made, he smiled, and was now convinced that they weren't counterfeit, but real
silver rubles. Then he raised his eyes to the ceiling and started counting as
if he were deliberating with someone. "Three rubles, fourteen hours a day,
for six days, how much does it come to for one hour?" He wrinkled his
forehead and scarcely moved his lips. It was obvious that his mind was working
hard. After a few minutes of calculating, he said: "It comes to about 3-4
kopeks an hour."

Avremel the bricklayer was a tall wide-shouldered Jew with a hard diffuse
beard, the color of mature dry straw. He was very poor and burdened with many
children. He calculated figures on paper, but he was excellent in his head.
Whoever had some calculation problem in town came to Avremel the bricklayer. He
would raise his eyes to the ceiling, rub his straw beard and start thinking.
When he found the right result, his clay-spattered face gave a smile. He
clapped his calloused hands and said: "That's it." He was always
exact to the cent. Now, as always, he was satisfied with his result. He played
a little with the three silver rubles, then handed them to Zelda and said,
"Here, put it away so she can make herself a new dress for the
holidays." Selde took the coins, went to the dresser, opened a drawer,
found a white handkerchief, wrapped the rubles in it and hid it in a drawer
under the white holiday tablecloth. She said: "With good health, it will
come in handy." Hodel took note of where her mother hid the money.

The next day after work, she ran to Arieh Leib the moneylender, gave him the
three rubles and got back her mother's pawned candlesticks. The next Friday
night Zelda kindled the Sabbath candles in her brass candlesticks, not in the
scooped turnips.

When the factory opened, life in town started moving faster. Every morning
children hurried to work. They returned home late and exhausted. Many girls
complained of aches and pains in arms, necks and spines. The mothers didn't
make a fuss of it, the children rested, forgot about their pain and continued
working. Life for mothers became easier. Debts were paid off, pawned pillows,
blankets or small pieces of jewelry pawned off to the moneylender since people
were married were bought back. Barefooted girls got stockings, shoes and new
dresses. Fathers and mothers were happy and thanked God for the income provided
by the glass factory. Everything was going fine, girls saved for dowries,
started wardrobes, and began to dream of marriage.

It shouldn't be said that everyone was pleased with the glass factory. Jews of
the old generation complaining, What a stir, what a commotion! Children
working, becoming breadwinners! Giving advice! Girls coming in contact with
boys and getting spoiled. Young people going to work in a glass factory. The
yeshiva in Vilna will become empty. This is how Moshe's brother-in-law,
Aharon Shia, talked. He had a long gray beard all the way down to his belt.

Beilka's grandfather Moshe was the most pious Jew in town. He never spoke on
the Sabbath, and if he ever had to, he did so with just a few words and in
Hebrew. On weekdays he said: "Well, what a world! Such strange habits
people have! He and made a gesture as if he wanted to give up on the
whole world. Later, when he heard that the Tchernichovs declared bankruptcy, he
fumed and raved, and shook his head saying "Nothing good can come from
such behavior.

The 20th Century came in raging and stormy, disturbing the peace of the great
people.
The factory workers became restless as well. They weren't just awed children
any more the way they were when the factory opened, but grown adults with
rheumatism. The work was hard on the girls, and all the factory workers
complained about their pains, about long hours and low pay.

The owners felt the oncoming crisis among the workers. In addition there was
the issues of large competition from other glass manufacturers, and poor
business management. One autumn day the office ordered work stopped and the
furnaces put out. A note on the doors announced that the owners had declared
bankruptcy. Worry about earning a living again affected the town. Workers were
unemployed and had no means of support. The town lived through a long hard
winter.

One spring day, when the snow just began to melt, a wagon brought a chubby,
handsome, Jew with a trimmed beard to town. A coachman was driving a reddish
brown horse, and soon the good news spread around that Leib Turek was taking
over the glass factory. He also contracted to build locks over the river and a
steam mill to make flour.

Joy returned to town, and when the factory horn sounded again, people all over
town went around with smiling faces since most people were workers, and they
felt secure again, like people who knew where they were going and what they
wanted. There were now young Polish glass blowers, specialists, molders and
mechanics. Peasant workers returned from the villages, and the town came back
to life. Not only was the factory working, but now there were sounds of
carpenters' hammers building the mill and locks on the Oginsky Canal. Mothers
again took their daughters to apply for jobs, and again children complained of
aches and pains, and of long hours and low wages. And again the unrest among
the workers began to increase.

[Page 133]

My Flowers on the Mass Grave
and also on our annihilated City of Telekhany

by Laibel Eisenberg

It was long before the idea of publishing a Yizkor book for the city of
Telekhany was born that I had wanted to write down and perpetuate on paper
certain thoughts and memories about our city Telekhany that is engraved in the
hearts of us all. However, every time I began this task so many images, event
and experiences from our town come to mind, that I don't even know where to
begin. Should I begin with different personalities, tradesmen, storekeepers and
ordinary people? Or with the Oginsky Canal and its ten locks that links Pinsk
with Telekhany by steam ship? Or with the well known alley where people strolled
and romanced for generations, starting with our grandparents, parents and
siblings; or with the empty brick house with the imagined demons we would pass
on the Sabbath during our strolls in the forest. Or possibly with the Rabbis and
religious schools where I spent eight years of my life studying until the
outbreak of World War I in 1914. Starting with the teacher Chaim Yeshayahu, then
on to Hershel the secular studies teacher, and ending with the modern worldly
Jewish teacher who we had in Telekhany, Shia Leizer.

I cannot accurately remember how old I was when I, like other children, began
going to kheder ; it must have been at about four or five years of age. I
just remember, however, that in the year prior to the outbreak of the first
World War, my father Jacob, who was very concerned that children should study
worldly subjects, hired Sonja Boaz's to teach me, the youngest child, and the
oldest of my brothers, Joshua, Russian and mathematics in the evening after we
came home from kheder . All of these and dozens of other childhood
memories, already virtually obscured in my memory, used to fill my thoughts and
how they would lead from one to the other to be perpetuated in my memory.

I have to admit that I myself used to push aside all of these thoughts because I
feared touching them lest, God forbid, because of my poor ability to describe
lives and events, I minimize and obscure their brightness. However, all the
following events served as an impetus, and forced me to record and describe some
of my memories about our town of Telekhany: the aforementioned letter from the
memorial committee; my last visit as a delegate from the Brazilian Jewish
delegation to the International Congress for Disarmament and Peace in Moscow in
July, 1962, where I had a chance to meet my cousin's brothers Motel, Aharon and
Shlomo Shlachman, as well as with the old politician Yossel Mashiach's, who
currently serves in the important position of director of a textile factory near
Moscow; my visit in Warsaw, Poland, with the brothers Ephraim and Leibel Davids
Klitenick, two friends in work and battle; my subsequent visit to Israel when I
participated in a memorial meeting held by the Committee on August 13, 1962 in
Tel Aviv. The last encouraging letter I received from Esther Miller, a member of
the Yizkor Book Committee, with whom I met in Telekhany in 1933 when I returned
after spending four years in prison. All of this impelled, demanded and insisted
that I record and take note of some of my recollections about our town of
Telekhany.

I bring to this task my entire being and power of imagination to produce before
my eyes the image of our Telekhany. I can now start to see the town's wood
houses lined up together, creating a fire hazard; Telekhany's streets and wooden
sidewalks, bringing its residents back to life just as I had left them the last
time in 1936, when I was being persecuted for political reasons and had to leave
for Brazil. I recall the economic and political situation of those days when the
young people set off into the big world. Many became pioneers in Palestine. I
remember the unemployment and the political and economic slavery. Fascism had
already dominated Germany, and was poisoning and encouraging the growth of
Polish fascism.

During my brief revolutionary activity in Telekhany in those days, from
1925-1936, I had undergone all of the torturous experiences of the Polish
defense movement, including spending four hard years in prison, working on
renewing the first concentration camp in Poland, Kartuz-Bereza.

Telekhany, that little town in Polesia in western White Russia had already
distinguished itself with quite a few political criminals listed in the
police archives. These were young people who had lost the fear of police
torture, imprisonment and Kartuz-Bereza. The Mordechai Mariankellers, the
Shammes Landmans, Yisrael David Kagan, Yisrael Feigel Bernstein, Ephraim and
Leibel Klitenick, the Minas, Grunyas, Ethels and Devorah Dinas are recorded with
dignity and pride in the revolutionary history of our destroyed town of
Telekhany. With their courage and faith, battle and endurance, they showed that
they remained faithful heirs of the fearless rebels and fighters, the Sisters
and Brothers of 1905, who put our town of Telekhany on the map of revolutionary
history in those days.

And our mothers? What honest, illustrious figures they were! They followed their
children's involvement in unkosher things with tremendous devotion and
motherly concern. They remained silent and consented to it, knowing how much
mortal danger this involved. These mothers suffered tremendous pain and human
dignity whenever a child was imprisoned or confined to a camp for his
revolutionary activity. Many of them maintained intermittent illegal contacts
after their sons were captured, and with their straight and pure thinking they
understood that this was their child's life, and that his future and freedom was
inexorably linked to it.

Many a year my dear, warm mother Rachel spent with the police's constant night
searches with their electric lamps! She was white as chalk, shaking from fear as
if she had a fever. My mother would ask me nervously, My son, you thief, do
you have any of your papers with you? Give them to me and I'll hide them. My
poor devoted mother! She could not imagine that her son would soon be sent away
after being proven not to have any papers.

It makes you shiver and shudder when you think about how all the gruesome and
awful experiences were a mere trifle compared to what the Nazi beasts were
thinking about how to murder and slaughter our loved ones. Is there a way to
measure the deep pain and suffering of those who were murdered, raped and shot
at the gravesite? Is there a comparable punishment that these murderers and
rapists should pay for everything that was dear, holy and beloved to us? Is
there any consolation for the few survivors who remained outside the mass
graves?

If we who were not there were unable to help save their lives from the gruesome
death, at least now we should feel our obligation and promise not to ever allow
the memory of our heroes and martyrs to be forgotten. Material should be
collected, and memories should be eternalized in a yizkor book about our town of
Telekhany, both about those who lived long ago and about the bloody pages of
history of our town. This should be a symbol of our resolve to do everything
possible so that the world and the Jewish People never again know about ghettos
and genocide. May our pain never disappear until we use our collective strength
to do everything to liberate mankind from the horrible danger of war that in the
Atomic Age is a mortal threat for all mankind, including the Jewish People.

[Page 136]

A Free Loan Society
and Food Bank for the Poor in Telekhany

by Golda Bookman-Landman

As in every other city and town where there were various associations to assist
the poor and needy such as free loan societies, hospices, wedding funds,
clothing funds, etc., we in Telekhany also set up a free loan society and a food
bank for the poor. These two organizations were created with money received from
former Telekhany residents living in the United States who had organized a
Telekhany association.

For many years, my grandfather, Nisan Gurstel, was treasurer of the free loan
society, and worked in it joyfully and devotedly for many years. By providing
interest free loans to poor artisans and shopkeepers repayable in small amounts,
many poor people were assisted and helped back on their feet. My grandfather was
so devoted to his work and to those receiving loans that he would go around
collecting the weekly repayments so that the recipients didn't lose time
bringing the money to the committee.

I was very familiar with the work, and knew about the situations people who
received the loans were in since my grandfather made me his secretary and
bookkeeper for both funds  the free loans society and the food bank. I
remember when Gershon Gurstal came to Telekhany, and we, the free loan staff,
welcomed him as a great guest, and prepared a special meeting in his honor.

When I was preparing to leave Telekhany, the administration together with our
Rabbi Glick made a banquet for me to thank me for my devoted work. I was also
assured that my work would also be appreciated in the United States. They kept
their word. They wrote the Telekhany émigrés in the United States that I was
coming, enumerated my services, and told them that I would bring greetings from
Telekhany. Before I arrived, a meeting where I was to speak was already
announced.

My report to the Telekhany émigrés did a lot to broaden the assistance
provided by the American émigrés. Even those people who were not that
interested and who did not send much money decided to start becoming involved
with people in Telekhany following my report.

I told them not only about the needs in town, but also how the organizations
function; I told them about the help that we received from the Telekhany
association and the Joint Distribution Committee; I told them that we went to a
conference that the Joint Committee in Warsaw had organized for the
representatives of the towns that received assistance from the Warsaw committee.
The president of the Free Loan Society, Michael Ziss, and I traveled as
delegates from Telekhany to the conference. We had to take along our books to be
able to provide a full report about the money we received.

My report made an impression, and this initiated significant assistance. I was
also pleased by the fact that I could also be helpful here in the United States
to my brethren in need. I was very proud of my work and the assistance that I
was able to provide to our poor brethren and follow in the footsteps of my
parents and grandparents whose primary concern was to help those in need. My
grandfather and grandmother and my parents always had an open home, and were
always inviting guests. There was nowhere to sleep, so people would sleep on the
oven, or on doors that were removed and placed on chairs. I was also pleased to
meet members of my family. They were extremely helpful to our hometown, and they
also sent funds to Palestine.

[Page 137]

What I Remember
from my Childhood in Telekhany

by Chana Godiner

It is over half a century since I left my hometown of Telekhany, but the tiny
houses, streets, the people from my little town are engraved into my memory.
This is especially true concerning the poverty and the everyday struggle for a
piece of stale bread.

My father, Israel David, was a teacher. His pupils were the poorest of children
in town. Of course, people did not have the money to pay him, so his income was
not enough to feed our family a piece of bread. Our mother became the
breadwinner, and between the two of them, we scarcely had enough to get by.

Among my father's pupils was his youngest child, Shmulik, who was just ten years
old. Shmulik was very talented and whatever father taught him, he learned by
heart. His oldest sister Chana, who worked for fifty hours a week at the glass
factory, used to send him the "Self Teacher" from Pinsk, which
inspired Shmulik even more to learn and write.

When our family moved to Warsaw, Shmuel was just fourteen years old, and went
off to work in a steel factory. He would study in the evening, and aspired to
become a writer. His writing skills soon became recognized, and he came to be
considered one of the outstanding writers in Jewish literature. When Hitler
invaded the Soviet Union, Shmuel joined other Jewish writers in the forest as
partisans to fight the Nazi barbarians, who wanted to dominate the world, and
who killed six million Jews, including the Jews of our dear town of Telekhany.
Shmuel was killed as a partisan in battle in 1942.

We, his two sisters Esther and Chana, established a reading club in his memory
here in Los Angeles. It is called the Shmuel Godiner Reading Circle. Let this be
another page in the Telekhany memorial book.

[Page 138]

A Letter to the Yizkor Book Committee

by Mendel and Keyle Bernstein, Edmonton Canada

Dear friends committee of the Telekhany Yizkor Book!

We apologize for the delay in responding to you. It was hard for us to write
given our feelings and knowledge about what happened to our dear and beloved
town of Telekhany  its beautiful river, the bridges, the alley, and
more than anything else, the dear people who were killed by the Nazi-German
murderers. We should never forget it, and it is our obligation to immortalize
their memory in a Yizkor Book.

We will of course make also a monetary contribution to help finance it, but we
don't have any photos.

Since we left Telekhany so long ago, it is difficult to return to the days of
our youth and remember the significant episodes of a life that was so
mercilessly destroyed. However after thinking about it for a long time, various
events and images from the distant past return to mind.

We remember when the peasants could no longer tolerate the oppression of the
landlords, and rose up and burned the landlord's buildings. It happened that my
uncle Mendel Nissen the butcher was searching for a lost cow, holding a lantern
in his hand. The police accused him for having burned the buildings, arrested
him and sent him to Siberia. Despite extensive lawsuits in court, it was not
possible to get him released. There was a distinguished Jew in town, a Chasid
and a scholar, Shmuel Chaim Segalovich, who had an influential friend in high
society in Moscow. My uncle went to his friend, and after some petitions and
payoffs to the Czar, my uncle was finally freed on the condition he change his
name from Eisenberg to Bronstein. I, Mendel, still remember how on high holidays
the fine Jews in their chassidic fur hats called "streimels" would gather in
the synagogues on the holidays, make a Lechaim [toast], and sing three
times in Russian: "Abraham, why aren't you pleading God for us?" Our
mothers at home would say the following rhyme on the Sabbath night in the dark:
"When the Messiah arrives on horseback, there will be good years ahead, if
he arrives on a wagon, there will be good times."

Now let me begin discussing the time when the movement began. I was then working
in Pinsk. When the first strike at the match factory took place, my friend
Hershel Zvodner and I got assigned to find out which of the strikers and leaders
the police were about to arrest. We spent a long time investigating this until
both Hershel and I were arrested ourselves. We got our first taste of jail and
beatings during the week we were incarcerated. We came home for Passover.

We brought home new songs like: "You plough and you sow," "New
Times", etc. We also brought back from Pinsk a book by Mendele Moikher
Sforim called "The Jade". We met together in our house and read it. My
mother liked it very much. She then hid it with the songs in the attic under the
straw roof.

We could perhaps remember many other episodes from our teenage years, episodes
that were serious and mischievous, happy and sad, since no matter how hard life
was, we became accustomed to it. We also had acceptable moments when we got
together  parents in their style, and we in ours. This is how life was until
the German destroyer, Hitler, may his named be erased, and his wild German
cannibals destroyed our life.

May this be our modest contribution to the Yizkor Book, and may our people and
the whole world never more experience such a catastrophe.

[Page 139]

We had Sarah-Do-Good in Town

by Riva Rosenbaum

We had a "grandmother" named Sheina Sarah. She was a tiny, skinny lady with
one eye (a hen had pecked out her other eye). She always went around with a
cane, and wore an apron with deep pockets. She always had something in those
pockets. She collected a challah, a piece of fish or a small chicken and other
things for poor families. In addition to helping women give birth, she also took
care of dowries for brides, medicine for the ill and shrouds for the dead.

Grandmother Sheina Sarah had women assistants who would collect contributions
from the wealthy to give to the poor. When Chaim Reuven had his fifth child, a
fifth girl, Grandma went out of the room and said to Chaim, "Well, Chaim
Reuven, a baby girl is just like carrot pudding [tsimmis] which costs
money." At the same time there were Treina Aharon Mushkas and Tsifra Bezes,
and Grandma winked at them for them to remain. She realized that she would get
what she needed faster with women than men, and what she needed was a burial
shroud for Chaim Yossel and a dowry for Beilka Shmerls.

She had a nice life and was always thinking of how to help the needy. She
carried all of the problems in town in the pockets of her apron, but never
needed anything for herself. She only cared about others. Everyone in town loved
her and respected her.

When she died she was over hundred years old, and when her many Telekhany
children and grandchildren would ask her, Granny, how old are you? she
would answer, What difference does it make to you? A hundred and one is all
the same. When she died all the storekeepers closed their businesses, and
even children went along to the cemetery. The gown she was wearing when she
passed away was cut up by elderly ladies and distributed among themselves as a
good omen for a long life.

[Page 140]

A Report from Gershon Gurstel

(Gershon Alter, son of the carpenter)

Throughout our years in the United States my wife and I always missed our dear
town of Telekhany, and hoped to have the opportunity to visit there one more
time, until finally in 1936, we took a trip there. It was summertime, and
everything was in bloom, and the nights were bright. The hens still cackled as
they had years before, but the poverty had become much worse. Most Jews were
unemployed, and all of the shops were in the names of the wives of the
storekeepers. When I asked why the businesses were registered in the names of
the women, I was told that the taxes of the Pilsudski regime were so
insufferable that the men had to declare bankruptcy and sign over the businesses
in the names of their wives. When I asked what would happen if their wives also
had to declare bankruptcy, I was told that they would register their businesses
in their children's names.

Since they lived on money sent from the United States, each person asked for the
addresses of relatives. There were no bakers in Telekhany because they had to
pay high taxes, and there were no customers for bread either. The people had no
money to buy baked goods.

We were in Telekhany for four weeks, but didn't enjoy it too much. There was the
poverty, the struggles and insecurity about what tomorrow would bring. For the
Sabbath they would slaughter a single calf for the entire town. The few new
houses and the Lubesh synagogue were built with money from the United States.
The power of the American dollar was very great. There was once an auction for aliyahs
[being called to make a blessing on the Torah reading], and I bought all of
the aliyahs with my American dollars. Before leaving Telekhany, I
arranged that all of the aliyah honors should be distributed among my
relatives.

We departed Telekhany broken-hearted as we watched young people feeling
abysmally lost and in a state of hopelessness. They weren't allowed into the
United States, and no other country was willing to accept them. Some were
confined in Kartuz-Bereza, and the only other hope and aspiration was to go to
Palestine and work on the kibbutzim and in other trades. Indeed, a large number
of young people ended up in Palestine, and they were very useful in the country.
They would work the fields, haul water and dig wells with a gun in their hand.

We saw their accomplishments with our own eyes when we traveled to Israel in
1959. They were proud Jews, and had achieved what Jews had dreamed about for two
thousand years!

May Israel live in peace together with all other peoples!

[Page 142]

Azriel the Son of the Mute Tragic Death
and the Fate of his Family

One day in 1915, Ezriel the son of the mute and his brother Chaim left their
houses together with their wives, Minka and Ahava (Lieba). They were on their
way to visit their parents. During the night, Telekhany was flooded with a large
group of Russian soldiers who were madly fleeing in retreat of the strong German
army. The sky shone with holiday light onto the unsettled ground. The beautiful
round sun provided warmth, and revealed nothing of what was hiding in the air as
far as Ezriel, his brother Chaim and their families were concerned.

The two brothers found their parents well when they got to their home. At the
same time a peasant entered the store to buy something and asked for change of
10 rubles, but this request was merely a provocation. In those days the
anti-semites were planting horrible libels against the Jews, and one of them was
that the Jews had shipped off their money, gold and silver to the Germans. The
peasant asked for change of 10 rubles, and their father said that he had no
change. This then supposedly confirmed that the Jews had sent all their gold and
silver to the Germans, and the peasant began hitting their father with a cane,
screaming that the Jews had shipped their money to the Germans. Their father
told the peasant he could have the bit of merchandise for free, but even this
didn't help. Finally their mother Elka managed to appease the peasant by giving
him a few other items for free.

The brothers were standing on the street wondering what was going on, and heard
the drunken singing of some Russian officers in Rimmer's orchard across the
street. The drunken officers soon came out onto the street and started chasing
Jewish women. One officer noticed Ezriel and Chaim and their wives, and started
harassing Ezriel's wife, Minka. He also slapped Ezriel across the face, and
Ezriel fell to the ground. Ezriel stood up and started hitting the officer. His
brother Chaim and the women tried to stop Ezriel, but then other officers ran
over and arrested Ezriel and Chaim, and took them over to their parents' home,
where they tied the two men up by their feet and hands as the officers decided
what to do with them. Soldiers armed with swords were standing in and around the
house, and wouldn't allow anyone enter or leave.

In the meantime the German army was approaching Telekhany, and the Russians had
to escape as quickly as possible. However, they didn't forget to take the two
brothers along. As they were fleeing, the wild officers gave Ezriel fifteen
lashes, and Chaim ten lashes. Ezriel lost consciousness from the lashes, and
soon died. Chaim tolerated them and survived. He and his wife Ahava now have a
beautiful family and live in Hadera, Israel.

The fate of the Eisenberg family in Israel during the construction of Israel and
the War of Liberation was very difficult. This is what the family reported: The
first victim was Yaakov, the son of Chaim and Lieba Eisenberg. Details about his
struggle and death can be found in a separate article in Hebrew in the Yizkor
Book.

Hershel, the son of Ezriel the son of the mute and his wife Minka, was killed
after falling from a broken veranda while he was working on a building. Chaim's
eight year-old daughter Chayaleh, who had brought him some food at the same
moment, was wounded and became an invalid.

A second son, Mordechai Yitzchak, a heroic young fellow, joined the Haganah when
he was fourteen years old, and four years later, when he was 18, he joined the
Jewish army as an experienced soldier. He was assigned to search for landmines
that had been placed by the Arabs on the roads where Jews traveled. One year
later he was sent to the Negev. Upon his return he was riding in a tank with
other soldiers when the tank overturned. Two soldiers were killed and Mordechai
Yitzchak was wounded in the head, causing him to now be an invalid.

Chaim's son Moshe left the Haganah in 1941 and joined the Jewish brigade under
the British. He suffered for being a Jew, and the brigade was sent to the
Italian front. Moshe was wounded, and when the war ended, he returned to
Palestine and was sent directly to Yesod Hamaleh to fight the Arabs.

Motka, the third of Chaim's sons, and a young man of 17, joined the British
army. In 1944 he was sent on a patrol on the Italian front. He was wounded there
and spent six months in the hospital. In 1946 he returned, and was sent to the
Sea of Galilee to organize a local defense brigade. He met his wife, married her
and now lives as an official in the State of Israel.

Ezriel's wife Minka arrived in Palestine with two sons, Mordechai Yitzchak and
Hershel, but left behind her daughter Zippora together with Zippora's husband
and two children in Telekhany. They were all killed by Hitler's Germans, may
their names be obliterated. Minka also left behind a son, Leibel, who fled from
the Nazi murderers, and made his way through the forests of Russia, until he got
to Tashkent. He worked very hard there, and even spent time in prison because of
an informant who reported falsely that he had spoken against the Soviet regime.
Along the way he met up with fine Jewish family, and married their daughter
Golda. After the war they returned to Poland and from there they headed for
Israel, stopping off along the way in Germany.

One week before they were supposed to go to Israel there was a football game
that Leibel and many others went to watch. Along the way their truck overturned,
and Leibel was killed. His wife, Golda, and their small daughter Zippora, were
left alone to travel on to Israel, where Leibel's family and his mother Minka
lived.

[Page 144]

Pictures and Images of Life in Telekhany

by Gershon Gurshtel

The Eve of Yom Kippur in Telekhany

The entire town would be wrapped in a G-d-fearing mood. Young and old performed
the custom of atonement through the turning a chicken around their heads on the
eve of Yom Kippur. Men used chickens, women used hens, and whoever had no
chickens simply used a coin instead. The coin was distributed among the poor
afterwards, and we children envied other children who used coins for the
atonement ceremony because although they could give out the coins to the poor,
they would use some coin to buy a snack after Yom Kippur.

My grandfather was the treasurer of the Chevra Kadisha [Burial Society],
and my grandmother Beilka would bake cookies. Grandfather would prepare small
glasses of vodka to give out at the cemetery to the Jews who came to visit the
graves of their ancestors. My grandfather would take me along to the cemetery,
and I would love to watch people walk around the graves reciting verses and then
go inside the small structures over the graves and drink some vodka.

These scenes made me wonder about certain things. I wondered whether when the
Messiah came, the dead would roll underground to the Holy Land. Wouldn't it be
better to travel alive to the Holy Land and when the Messiah comes, be
resurrected and enjoy eating everything with the Leviathan?

Coming home from the cemetery we would prepare for the pre-fast dinner. After
dinner, grandfather put on his white robe and we, his grandchildren, would
gather around him for his blessing. He put his hands on each of our heads and
blessed us individually.

After the blessing, I felt assured that I and all other Jews would have a good
year.

Sabbath Bereishit in Telekhany

(the First Sabbath After Simchat Torah)

The Sabbath when we start reading from the beginning of the Torah, known as
Sabbath Bereishit, follows Simchat Torah. The Chasidim enjoyed themselves during
the entire nine days of Sukkot. They would get together in the evenings in the
Lyubesh synagogue to dance and sing and drink a little vodka. When Simchat Torah
arrived, there was no limit to the rejoicing and dancing. They wanted to forget
the approaching autumn with its rain and cold. They had to have boots for
themselves and the children. Firewood had to be stocked up for the cold winter.
The roof was leaking and there wasn't any money to fix it. They wanted to forget
all their problems, and hoped that G-d would help somehow. It was very hard to
plunge back into the rough reality of every day life after the holidays.

But there is a great G-d in the world, so he prepared a Sabbath Bereishit for
his children, the Jewish People. It's no big deal for him! We now started to
read from the beginning of the Torah again, and we again have a new holiday of
Simchat Torah. People got together again on Friday night in the Lyubesh
synagogue to dance and to sing the Rebbe's melodies. The principal singers were
Yossel the ritual slaughterer and Alter the carpenter, who didn't read from
music sheets. As soon as they heard a tune, they started singing along.

What did they do after the singing and dancing? The chassidim had their own
custom of going from house to house and sneak out kugels from the ovens. The
women were already prepared, and had already cooked two kugels for Sabbath
Bereishit. The question was how to sneak into a house on the Sabbath. Alter the
carpenter knew how to open a door or a window, or through the attic. Yossel the
blacksmith would have to go along because he was needed to open the hot oven
since he had hardened, heat resistant hands. They knew that a hot oven shouldn't
be opened too early, but a fresh kugel, dripping with oil and there for the
taking, plus a noodle kugel, were worth the risk.

They once wanted to enter a house that was locked shut, and they couldn't manage
to get in, and wondered what kind of chassidim these people were here. So Alter
the carpenter became a ladder, and Yosef the blacksmith climbed up on him
and crawled in through the attic. He climbed down into the house using a ladder
and was about to get the kugel. However, Yosef Abba the blacksmith was groping
around in the dark, tripped and fell as he tried to go down the ladder. Yosef
Abba didn't get confused. He managed to get into the house anyway, opened the
oven and grabbed both kugels to get back at the owners of the house. When he
returned back, his friends laughed at his find  the two kugels  and at
Yosef's appearance.

How Alter the Carpenter Became a Doctor in Telekhany

Our town was blessed by G-d to have many Jews who suffered from hernias. Once it
happened that Alter the carpenter was in Yechiel the painter's house when
Yechiel started suffering from the symptoms of this illness. The doctor was
called at once, and during the doctor's procedures, Alter watched him
attentively, and became an expert in treating hernias himself.

Shortly thereafter, my grandfather Meir Yankel suffered from a hernia just like
Yechiel the painter. The doctor was out of town, as was the country surgeon.
Alter soon heard about the problem and came at once while other chassidim were
running to synagogue to recite psalms. He performed the entire procedure that
the doctor had done to Yechiel the painter, and helped my grandfather. The town
found out about what Alter the carpenter had done for my grandfather, and from
then on, he did the same thing for other Jews. They started calling Alter the
carpenter instead of the doctor.

Once on a Sabbath morning, during the prayer service in the Lyubesh synagogue,
the congregants were in the middle of the Torah reading when a peasant entered
the synagogue asking for Alter the carpenter. The congregation was startled to
find a gentile suddenly coming to the synagogue on the Sabbath to look for Alter
the carpenter. Alter asked the peasant what he wanted. The peasant responded,
Dear doctor, a man in our village of Klitenyu got sick and the doctor and
country surgeon are nowhere to be found. However we heard about you. Please come
and save the man's life.

Alter got scared. After all, it was the Sabbath in the middle of services during
the Torah reading. What should he do? He went straight to the rabbi for
guidance. The Rabbi said: Go home, Alter, eat your Sabbath meal and go with
the man, a human's life is more important than the Sabbath. The congregation
then watched Alter the carpenter get on a wagon on the Sabbath to save a peasant
on the Sabbath. From then on he was known as doctor.

The Synagogues of Telekhany

Our town had four different synagogues: three chassidic ones and one
non-chassidic one. The synagogues were run in accordance with the economic
condition of the chassidim. The Lyubesh synagogue was named for the Rebbe of
Lyubesh, and was the synagogue of the Lyubesh chassidim who were considered
year long Jews who were not poor, meaning that it was a synagogue of the
happy beggars, Jews who were not considered as full-time beggars. When the rebbe
would come to town, people were happy all week, and they would go to visit him.
Some asked him to advise them about financial problems, others about marriage
proposals for a daughter, and others who wanted to have children.

The Stolin synagogue followed the customs of the Rebbe of Stolin, who had
illustrious ancestry. He was a rebbe of businessmen, and rarely came to
Telekhany. Whenever he did come to visit, it was only for a couple of days. The
businessmen would consult him about their businesses and rewarded him well. The
rebbe himself conducted himself in a royal manner. He would travel with a train
of horses. He would always change the horses for better ones. He loved horses.
When he came to the synagogue on Friday night for the prayer services, the
chassidim would have to wait until the end to receive wishes for a good Sabbath
from the rebbe. However, he would converse with the wagon drivers until he came
to synagogue; he loved talking with them about horses.

The Yanova synagogue. Since the Yanova Rebbe was a rebbe of the poor Jewish
masses, the synagogue was not for the wealthy. In fact, a tailor named Hillel
the Tailor had provided the funds to build the synagogue. Nevertheless, the
chassidim greatly respected their rebbe.

The non-chassidic synagogue. The wealthiest Jews in town belonged to the
non-chassidic synagogue. It was a beautiful synagogue, and the wealthiest man in
town, who happened to be a Lyubesh chassid, attended the non-chassidic synagogue
as well. We children would often sneak into the synagogue to warm up because it
was the only synagogue in town that had a coal oven. However, we didn't like the
Jews of the non-chassidic synagogue. We used to call them dry Jews. The
chassidim were a happier and friendlier group.

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